Hazel Cills

On Friday, journalist Caleb Hannan tweeted a link to a recent Grantland story he did, writing, "Not sure what to say other than this is the strangest story I've ever worked on."

The piece, entitled "Dr. V's Magical Putter," was about a "mysterious" physicist and inventor named Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt, her company Yar Golf, and the "scientifically superior" gold golf club she'd engineered, a putter called the Oracle GXI. It begins as what seems like a straight-forward but in-depth profile: Hannan contacts "Dr. V," as she was known to her peers, and her colleagues. He outlines the physics that make the Oracle possible—even testing it out for himself—and sketches the beginnings of Yar Golf.

But the article quickly becomes an investigative story into the woman's personal life. Hannan, unable to confirm the time she'd claimed to have spent at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, began to dig more deeply into Dr. V's past life, learning that the time she claimed to have spent on "top-secret government projects" was really spent working as a "struggling mechanic."

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But what ultimately made this piece "the strangest" story he's worked on is that is investigation revealed that Dr. V was a trans woman, born with male sex organs, a discovery that gave Hannan "a chill that ran up [his] spine." Halfway through the story, his focus stops being that of a work of sports journalism and becomes—in his words—"the tale of a troubled man who had invented a new life for himself."

At the very end of the piece, after writing of the push-back he received when disclosing to Dr. V that he was to out her in the article (an act deemed by Dr. V to be a "hate crime") Hannan writes that she killed herself.

At first, Hannan was receiving praise left and right for his piece, with fans applauding his reporting and the crazy nature of the story.

But it wasn't long before writers and editors started to raise questions about the morality of Hannan's story. Why was the gender of the subject suddenly made the focus of a sports story? Did writing this story "drive" Dr. V to suicide?

This story is unnervingly silent on whether the reporter's investigation contributed to the subject's suicide. http://t.co/m9mSwynOCx

And trans activists and writers were in an uproar over Hannan outing Vanderbilt and it being praised as journalism. On many blogs like Shakesville and personal Tumblrs, writers outlined at length the moral problems and the transphobia evident in Hannan's piece and called out the culture surrounding its defense.

Disturbing to see so many react w/ bemusement rather than horror to @calebhannan's piece. In their guts, trans people are less than human.

Amid the calls to Grantland for his resignation and arguments, Hannan hardly engaged with anyone on Twitter who wasn't praising his piece. But with some writers back-tracking on their initial compliments to his piece, and a lack of response from Hannan himself, it was clear that he was feeling the pressure of what felt like dozens of journalists scrutinizing the ethics of his piece. And though it doesn't make his piece "right" or take back what he wrote, it seems Hannan is coming around to listening to why his critics are up in arms.

For what it's worth, I haven't blocked anyone today. I'm reading all of this. I'm totally overwhelmed, but I'm reading.